After trial, Weymouth family copes with daughter’s murder

Heather Mullin, mother of 6-year-old Joanna, says the conviction of their nephew Ryan Bois has “lifted a bit of a weight off of us.”

By Jack Encarnacao

The Patriot Ledger, Quincy, MA

By Jack Encarnacao

Posted Mar. 14, 2009 at 12:01 AM
Updated Mar 14, 2009 at 2:07 PM

By Jack Encarnacao

Posted Mar. 14, 2009 at 12:01 AM
Updated Mar 14, 2009 at 2:07 PM

WEYMOUTH

» Social News

During the day, Heather and Jerry Mullin hit rides like the Tower of Terror with their children, nieces and nephews, and ate breakfast among costumed mascots.

Each night of their 11-day trip to Disney World, the couple logged on to the Internet for an update on the trial of their nephew, Ryan Bois, 22, who was convicted Thursday in the 2007 rape and murder of their 6-year-old daughter, Joanna.

They skimmed the lurid details, spending no more than 15 minutes getting up to speed. They made some calls to family, but Heather purposely left her cell phone back in Weymouth.

“We wanted separation,” Jerry Mullin said, standing in the kitchen of his Weymouth home on Friday.

The Mullins attended none of the sessions of Bois’ eight-day trial, choosing instead to travel with their three children, brothers and a stable of nieces and nephews to Disney World.

“We’ve made a choice to kind of keep the focus on the kids, keep the focus on our healing,” Heather Mullin said. “We spent a year and a half trying to work towards a little normalcy. We didn’t want to take 20 steps back and have to rebuild.”

Everyone from aunts to neighbors stood in for Joanna’s parents in the courtroom and provided updates. One consistent source of information was Jerry’s brother James, who sat in the front row every day of the trial.

“Those things that happened in that courtroom, no parent should ever have to hear or see,” said James Mullin, a Weymouth police captain and Joanna’s uncle.

Bois received a life prison sentence for the murder, which took place at the home of Bois’ and Joanna’s grandmother, less than a mile from the Mullins’ home in East Weymouth.

The Mullins returned to Weymouth on Tuesday, when Bois’ trial was delayed a day after the 22-year-old’s attorney reported he was “too fragile” to appear in court.

Her Disney trip behind her, Heather Mullin was ready to face the situation one more time. She sat at her computer and typed a poignant statement about all that had happened. The one-page note, which brought tears to the judge’s eye when it was read in court by Heather’s sister-in-law Thursday, took her about 15 minutes to write.

“I had thought about it for a while,” she said.

At the end of the note, Mullin touched on the fact that Ryan Bois had lived with the Mullin family for a time, and how betrayed they felt by what he did.

As she wrote, Mullin didn’t know what Bois’ fate would be, though she said she knew “in her heart” that he would spend the rest of his life in prison.

She said she couldn’t guess what Bois would think of her statement.

Page 2 of 2 - “It wasn’t going to reach probably the person that we knew ... that’s a different person,” she said of her nephew.

The Mullins thanked the jury for “seeing through to the facts” and coming to a swift decision.

Since the verdict, Heather Mullin has visited Joanna’s grave in a cemetery a short walk from her home.

The sky was clear, perhaps a symbol for the way Mullin described her feelings since the verdict.

“I think it lifted a bit of a weight off of us,” she said. “We kind of had that cloud hanging over.”